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Hi guys. Five years ago I left my career in desktop and embedded programming. Although I never stopped scratching some itches, I now yearn for some nice gruesome programming. I have some experience developing games (mostly cell phone games in the pre android era, but a couple of Ogre3D games too.)

Anyhow, here goes: is there any open source implemmentation of a simple open world game that I can take a look at? Or books, perhaps?

I'm not going for anything AAA, I don't need amazing graphics or anything like that. I'd just like to play with some mechanics I've been designing. I think I'm going to make a C++ server and deal with the client later (for my purposes, any crude client interface is fine for now - even roguelike text).

Particularly, I've been wondering what kind of data structures are used to keep track of the maps, player and npc positions etc. in a large but not necessarily densely packed world.

Thanks :)

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Honestly? It's really just arrays or maybe lists. In a sparse world it doesn't always make sense to use a spatially-driven data structure, and some of the edge cases (clusters of players/monsters) can deteriorate badly in popular spatial systems.

Maps are likely heightfields with additional model geometry layered on top of them for buildings, trees, etc.

There's not a lot of magic to "open world" outside of rendering the actual world.